Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies
HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE
Fall 2013 Courses

This course examines the often contradictory impacts of economic development on gender relations in developing countries and asks: what challenges do global economic trends pose for gender equality and equity in developing countries? How do gender relations in turn shape the outcomes of economic development policies? To answer these questions, we will explore the links between development policy and gender inequality in Africa, Asia and Latin America, in the context of a globalizing world economy. Special topics to be explored through the close reading and analysis of books, scholarly articles and documentaries will include the household as a unit of economic analysis; women's paid and unpaid labor, the gendered impacts of economic restructuring, international trade, and economic crisis; the feminization of migration flows and the global labor force in the formal and informal sector, and the implications of these trends for economic development. The course will conclude with an evaluation of tools and strategies for achieving gender equity within the context of a sustainable, human-centered approach to economic development.

Introduction to Queer Studies explores the emergence and development of the field of queer studies since the 1990s. In order to do so, the course examines the relationship between queer studies and fields like postcolonial studies, gay and lesbian studies, transgender studies, disability studies, and critical race studies. Students will come away with a broad understanding of the field, particularly foundational debates, key words, theories, and concepts. As part of their research, students will explore alternative genealogies of queer studies that exceed the academy. Some questions that guide the course include: How have art, film, activism, and literature influenced the field? What people and events are critical to queer studies that may be ignored or forgotten? In this way, students will come away understanding the contours of the field, but they will also work to reimagine the field and its history.

This course explores contemporary debates over the role of religion and science in public policy, specifically in the areas of sexuality and reproduction. We look both at claims that science and religion are inevitably in conflict, as well as arguments for their compatibility. We will investigate the FDA's refusal to approve over the counter distribution of emergency contraception; claims that abortion is linked to breast cancer and causes a form of post-traumatic stress disorder; the debates over public funding for abstinence-only sexuality education, stem cell research, and coverage of abortion and contraception in the Affordable Care Act. We will look at these issues in the context of broader societal debates over creationism and intelligent design and challenges to claims about the objectivity of science. Students are required to participate in class discussions, give an oral presentation, write short essays based on the readings and a final research paper or project.

This course is of interest to all Div II students who seek to incorporate a historical perspective to their work. It will cover a wide range of topics and recent methodologies such as transnational identities, immigration/migration, race and ethnicity, women's history, early modern science, visual culture, sex and the body, gender and the law. Students will have the opportunity to engage directly with archival material and critically analyze oral history methods. The readings will be located in Renaissance Europe, the early modern Mediterranean, the Black Atlantic, and Contemporary America/Transnational Sites. In addition, we'll invite other Hampshire historians to speak about their own work in Afro-American, South Asian, Middle-Eastern, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. history.

Feminist political economy is a rapidly expanding field of economics that critically analyzes both economic theory and economic life through the lens of gender and advocates various forms of feminist economic transformation. But is there a need for a feminist political economy, and if so, why? How is the analysis of feminist political economy different from mainstream economic analyses of gender inequality? The class will begin with a theoretical and empirical introduction to the concerns of feminist economics. Students will then be introduced to mainstream economic explanations of gender differences and inequality which form the basis for feminist political economic critiques. We will then embark on an in-depth study of feminist economic methodology, theory, applications and policy prescriptions, and visions of a feminist economic future. The class will be run as an upper-level seminar, and students will benefit from prior knowledge of economics and/or women's and gender studies. Students will have the opportunity to carry out independent research projects on an issue of relevance to feminist political economy e.g. household economics; environmental issues; the care economy; migration; feminist economics of trade; macroeconomic policy; financial crises; welfare policy.

This course takes a transnational approach to the study of race and sexuality by exploring the centrality of the modern nation-state to our conceptions of identity, subjectivity, race, sexuality, and gender. To that end, the course focuses on transnational and postcolonial work in queer studies, feminist studies, and the history of sexuality. Because the course takes a global approach to the study of race and sexuality, students will work to make connections across time and space in class discussions, research projects, and the course blog. Topics will include: Migration and immigration; slavery; colonialism and imperialism; science and biology; citizenship and belonging.

How do we know who is a terrorist? A good Muslim? A bad Arab? a criminal? A (bad) immigrant v. a cosmopolitan citizen? Do persons make decisions about their identities or are they "produced" in ways beyond their control? Can one's racial, ethnic, gendered self-recognition be publicized in ways that zie likes, or will that identity necessarily be misrecognized and reappropriated? "In this course, we will look at a range of writings on how groups, cultures, and identities are created within political and legal contests. Readings may include legal statutes, case studies, ethnic histories, and texts by Foucault, Butler, W. Brown, N.T Saito, D. Carbado, K. Johnson, K. Crenshaw, C. Taylor, N. Fraser, Alcoff, Ortega, among others.

From popular media to policy discussions, academic analyses to activist calls to action, we are continually presented with gendered images of victimized Muslim women and violent Muslim men in the Middle East. Anthropological accounts of the lived experiences and subjective narratives of Muslims in this region complicate and confound such Orientalist stereotypes. In this course, we will critically analyze and compare ethnographies that examine Muslim lives in various Middle Eastern contexts. Through these readings, as well as lectures, films, and class discussion, we will explore how these lives are informed by gender, but also by local and global economies and politics, class, Islam, generation, sectarianism, nation, and migration. We also will take time to track the politics of gender since the "Arab Spring."

The representation of the human body is central to the history of art. This course will explore this crucial subject as it has been portrayed over the past two centuries. The course begins with readings on anatomy and the shift from Jacques-Louis David's virile masculinity in the 1780s to a more androgynous and even feminized male as rendered by his followers. It then will explore the spectacle of a modern city in which prostitutes/ Venus/ femme fatales/other kinds of working women, often were favored over the domestic sphere. After examining art from the period of World War I where various assaults on traditional mimesis took place among avant-garde artists, this course will explore contemporary investigations of bodily representation, from the body sculpting projects of Orlan to identity politics and the ways that bodily representation have been developed.

How did Victorians conceive of the body? In a culture associated in the popular imagination with modesty and propriety, even prudishness, discussions of sexuality and physicality flourished. This course explores both fictional and non-fictional texts from nineteenth-century Britain in conjunction with modern critical perspectives. We will discuss debates over corsetry and tight-lacing, dress reform, prostitution and the Contagious Diseases Acts, sexology, hysteria, and other topics relating to science and the body, alongside novels, poetry, and prose by major Victorian writers. The writings of Freud, Foucault, and other theorists will assist us in contextualizing nineteenth-century discourses of gender, sexuality, and embodiment.

This introduction to feminist theory will focus on the last half-century of feminist thought, with some exploration of earlier foundational texts. We will consider issues of essential, constructed, intersectional, and performed understandings of subjectivity and trace feminist theory's interactions with race, class, materialism, psychoanalytic theory, poststructuralism, post-colonialism, and queer theory, as well as delving into recent work in feminist epistemology, technoscience, and affect theory. Writing assignments will include short weekly response pieces as well as longer analytic pieces. Film viewings will be required. One of the goals of this course is to inspire students to be theorists themselves. Please bring a description or definition of "feminist" and "theory" (not necessarily from the dictionary) to the first class meeting.

This seminar delves into the dynamics, debates, and desires that drive pop fandom. In this class, we ask: What is fan culture? Does it build community? Are fans different from other consumers? What are the ethics and politics of fandom? What are the aesthetic, social, and legal ramifications of fan-produced forms such as mash-ups, remixes, youtube videos, and fanfic/slash that borrow, customize, and reinterpret pop commodities? How do such textual appropriations call into question the boundaries between high and low, production and consumption, intellectual property and fair use? Do fan-produced forms challenge or reinforce Romantic notions of authorship and authenticity? Particular attention will be paid to: the queering of heterosexist pop texts; the racialized and sexualized construction of masculinity and femininity; the politics of sampling, remixing, and mashing; and the role of the Internet, blogs, and social networking technologies in fan culture.

In her 1924 essay "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown," Virginia Woolf observed, "On or about December, 1910, human character changed." Drawing inspiration from Woolf's famous phrase, this course focuses on modes of redescribing personhood in the work of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, placing their writings in the larger context of British culture between the First and Second World Wars. In addition to reading texts by these two foremost modernists to explore their experiments with form and voice, we will also read lesser-known writers whose work is in conversation with the modernist canon. Themes to be addressed include the disjointedness and fragmentation of modernity; war, violence, and trauma; gender, sexuality, and the nation.